Sun leaps into peer-to-peer arena - industry winces

The news comes less than a week before Sun Microsystems sheds some light on Jxta - a code layer designed to enable developers to build peer-to-peer (P2P) applications.

Eric Woods, research director at Ovum, said that although Jxta is potentially a convincing technology, the company must not tie down a detailed specification on how to develop P2P, as it did with Java.

"This is not disparate from what Sun did with Java. It does provide a vendor standard, but they get benefit from it at the same time. What Sun is doing will be generally welcomed - providing it does not deflect too much towards Sun's agenda," he said.

Sun CTO, Bill Joy's plans have also drawn fire from arch-rival Intel. The chipmaker's CTO, Pat Gelsinger, has accused the company of trying to create a proprietary club around P2P.

To date, Sun has shied away from joining the P2P working group - an industry association working to develop P2P standards. Current members include Fujitsu, HP, Intel and J D Edwards.

Brian Morrow, chairman of the US-based P2P working group, said: " Intel is trying to encourage the industry community to move to P2P but Sun has decided to put something forward that is a little bit more their own. They are working with a number of players but Sun is not a formal member of the working group so we'll have to wait and see what they come up with."

The Sun Microsystems website will host a webcast next Wednesday when Bill Joy will further expand on Jxta's technology.